More than 60 organisations will caravan and mobilize demonstrations and an encampment in front of the Interior Secretariat

More than 60 campesino organisations, defenders of water and the environment, will mobilize demonstrations and encampment in front of the Interior Secretariat (Segob), to solicit attention to problematic issues like a meeting of indigenous peoples and the budget for the countryside.

Said José Narro, leader of the National Plan of Ayala Coordinating Committee (CNPA-MV), “Today they will be installing commissions from other organisations will broaden the caravan over the course of the day. This encampment will be joined by caravans at 10 p.m. together with the unions of the National Workers Union and the Unified Social Front, which they will be receiving at 6 p.m. on April 10. All the caravans will enter simultaneously by different points of Mexico City, and together the entire contingent will participate in a march the next day at 10 a.m. from he Ángel de la Independencia to the Interior Secretariat.”

The demands are for the release of 50 political prisoners who are defenders of the environment, attention to 140 conflicts generated by mining and hydroelectric mega-projects in Mexico, and a free and informed meeting for indigenous peoples.

Members of el Barzón march to the Angel of Independence. Photo: Notimex/Alberto Garcia

The camp in front of Segob will be maintained until April 11, and will be accompanied by other actions on a national scale.

Said Uriel Vargas, a leader of El Barzón, “In addition to the caravans that will be arriving in Mexico City from different states, mainly in the north, there will be reactivated roadblocks, blockades of train tracks, and closures of border crossings which were so the government would reply in late December about the diesel incentives for agricultural and fishing, which mobilizations have ben based, when they promised us there would be a new agreement for the countryside, but there has been no response.”

Vargas stressed that for farmers, social protest is the only vehicle for dialogue with the federal government, as they have been ignored by various government agencies.

“We will also be asking for the liberation of our detained comrades, the cessation of harassment of our group of environmental advocates, advocates for water and it is in that sense that we ordered the intervention of the Segob, mainly because neither the Economy Secretariat, nor the Agriculture, Livestock, Rural Development, Fisheries and Food Secretariat (Sagarpa), nor the Agriculture, Land and Urban Development Secretariat (Sedate) are giving a response that we want,” continued Vargas.